Mark Schaefer, director of technical sales in the Microsoft Pacific Northwest Region, talks about how his team has experienced digital transformation—how an integrated toolset built on Dynamics 365 and Azure Cloud Services replaced multiple tools, complex processes, and time-consuming administration. This new set of tools boosted team morale and dramatically increased productivity—transforming the team into efficient, motivated sellers who think about strategy, long-term vision, and customer satisfaction.

At Microsoft, digital transformation touches all parts of our business, including sales. We designed our sales solution as an evolving and streamlined toolset for customer relationship management and business intelligence. Built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Azure Cloud Services, it has significantly simplified our processes. What was a regimented and inconsistent system has become an individualized experience that puts customers first, and prioritizes selling time, simplicity, and coaching.

To manage immigration and travel issues for visa-dependent employees, Microsoft created a streamlined solution based on configurable Dynamics 365 features. The solution manages complex immigration workflows, smartly creates and reuses forms and documents, and integrates with 12 partner systems. It helps the immigration team optimize its processes and lets our employees spend more time on their important strategic work.

When managing advertising agreements became complex and error-prone, Microsoft IT turned to Microsoft Dynamics 365 to create a contract life cycle solution. The system streamlined contract creation, approval, and management—and moved Dynamics 365 beyond customer relationship management. It integrates with external systems like SAP and DocuSign to automate, digitize, and simplify contracts and transactions. The system set the standard for hybrid cloud configurations at Microsoft.

To optimize complex transactions and contracts worldwide, Microsoft designed a new system based on Dynamics 365. It automates business processes and accommodates customized workflow management for our business units. Moving Microsoft contracts and transactions through a structured process helps us coordinate people and cases efficiently.

Sometimes, IT and business leaders must decide whether to build a new app or modify an existing one. Valuable development time can be wasted if a solution is already available. To make it easy to find useful apps, Microsoft created AppSource, which contains more than 500 apps, content packs, add-ins, and extensions that enhance and extend proven Microsoft solutions. AppSource apps work with Dynamics 365, Power BI, Office 365, and Azure. It’s a cost-effective, turnkey solution that’s helping us—and our customers—accelerate digital transformation.